2024 nat’l budget to focus on infra, agri, health, education

The proposed 2024 national budget will continue to focus on priority sectors such as infrastructure, agriculture, health and education, Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Amenah Pangandaman said Monday.

In a statement, Pangandaman said these priority sectors are included in the administration’s Medium-Term Fiscal Framework (MTFF) which was adopted by Congress.

“MTFF, it’s a fiscal consoli- dation program [that contains] the priority programs and areas which we should support,” she said.

“We will continue the infrastructure program of the national government, from Build, Build, Build to Build, Better, More, from 5-6 percent of GDP (gross domestic product), now this year, it’s 5.8 percent. So, we’re still working on the 2024 budget, so we need to adhere with that.”

Pangandaman also cited the need to continue prioritizing the budget for the agriculture sector.

“We all know that this year, we increased it to about 40 percent because from previous years, it’s like we didn’t give enough investment. Our support to the agriculture sector is so low. But when the pandemic happened, everything closed —our value chains stopped, and it’s important that we have enough food in our country, enough produce,” she said.

We grew up watching films and animated series with pig characters like Porky Pig, Miss Piggy, Three Little Pigs, and Babe.

The “Good Bad Mother” is a Korean drama in Netflix about a village piggery with the concept that falling down is a way for one to see the world in another perspective.

The narrator notes that pigs live their entire life staring at the ground. The anatomy of pigs causes their inability to lift their heads and prevents them from seeing the sky.

There is only one way for pigs to look up at the sky: to slip and fall down finding itself facing upward. Falling down is an opportunity to see another world which one has never seen before.

Good Bad Mother is the story of single mom and pig farm owner, Jin Young-soon (Ra Mi-ran), and her son Choi Kang-ho (Lee Do-hyun). Young-soon has lived a tenacious life to protect her child whose strictness as a tiger mama forced Kang-ho to study obsessively. The son became a successful cold-hearted prosecutor.

But when a tragic accident leaves Kang-Ho with the mind of a

ATTY. DENNIS R. GORECHO KUWENTONG PEYUPS

GOOD BAD MOTHER: PIGS AS SYMBOLS OF FAILURES AND SUCCESS

child, he was forced to move back with his mother, leading the two to go on a journey to recover their relationship.

There were several incidents that almost led to the shutting down of the piggery: fire, foot and mouth (FMD) viral disease and petitions by the village people for its closure for being a nuisance.

In the recent case of Municipality of Binan, Laguna, vs Holiday Hills Stock & Breeding Farm Corp and Domino Farms, Inc (G.R. No. 200403 October 1 0 2022), the Supreme Court addressed the issue of piggeries as subjects of police power.

The Binan local government unit (LGU) officials issued an ordinance that sought to abate the two hog farms which are located near residential subdivisions.

To invoke police power, LGUs must establish two requisites: (1) the interests of the public generally require an interference with private rights; and (2) the means adopted must be reasonably necessary to accomplish the purpose and not be unduly oppressive upon individuals.

The Supreme Court noted that nuisances are of two kinds: nuisance per se and nuisance per accidens.

The first (per se) is recognized as a nuisance under any and all circumstances, because it constitutes a direct menace to public health or safety, and, for that reason, may be abated summarily under the undefined law of necessity.

The second (per accidens) is that which depends upon certain conditions and circumstances, and existence being a question of fact, it cannot be abated without due hearing in a tribunal authorized to decide whether or not such a thing does in law constitute a nuisance.

What sets a nuisance per se apart from one per accidens is its characteristic of being a direct menace to public health or safety.

It is the law of necessity that justifies the summary abatement of a nuisance per se. The obstruction must hinder the public use of streets, highways, or sidewalks, or the interference with the safety or property of a person must be immediate.

The hog farms were considered a nuisance per se since they

FRED C. LUMBA SPECKS OF LIFE

“A government afraid of its citizens is a Democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny.” -

ANTHONY ROBBINS.

********

You should find it commendable that DILG chief BenHur Abalos has ordered a mandatory drug testing for all personnel under the DILG umbrella and the LGUs nationwide.

Abalos’ action is very logical considering that the DILG is leading the anti-illegal drugs campaign.

What better place to start it but within the premises of the department itself because DILG people should live and lead exemplary lives.

There were ugly incidents reported in the past that some wayward personnel of the bureaucracy were discovered to have been involved in the proliferation of illegal drugs either as users or couriers.

The results of this mandato- ry drug testing should be widely publicized by LGU to LGU, starting with the barangays.

Abalos may just be surprised by the eventual results.

AS citizens, we expect pur respective barangays to be clean, led by the barangay head and all the kagawads therein.

There are more than 42,000 barangays in the archipelago and some of them are very remote and sometimes unreachable or difficult to reach by ladn or sea travel.

City and munipal mayors should also be glad that the order came straight from the department chief so that they don’t need to overstress the importance of the instruction.

We should expect the Civil Service Commission to make a follow through and a similar declaration because we in the media receive “whispers” that some unscrupulous civil servants are into the bad habit.

A sweeping cleansing of the civil service ranks involves some emit an unfavorable stench or foul odor of distressing or annoying character that immediately interferes with the health and safety of the residents.

Although the piggery in Good Bad Mother was not closed despite complaints of being a nuisance, the pigs were buried alive due to the onslaught of Foot-and-Mouth disease (FMD) in the nearby areas, except for a piglet named Lion.

FMD is one of the most devastating and highly contagious viral disease of cloven-footed livestocks caused by “picornavirus” and is characterized by vesicles on the feet, snout and in the mouth.

Virus transmission occurs through respiratory aerosols and direct or indirect contact with infected animals with excretions and secretions.

A study from the University of the Philippines identified factors to lessen the risk of FMD virus contamination, like proper disposal and waste management, putting pigs of different ages together, and a good diet.

The disease usually is managed through quarantine, restriction of movement of animals in quarantined areas, slaughter followed by burial or incineration of infected and exposed animals and disinfection of production sites.

The series writer said in an interview that when pigs give birth, they can only spend 28 days together. They have to teach their piglets before they get separated.

She added: “So as people. All mothers have to leave their children behind as humans die at one point. So this series started with a question ‘What kind of life and ways of living should we teach our children before we leave this world.’”

Failure may seem like a setback, but it allows us to unlock great potential, to refine our path and to learn what works and what does not.

Perhaps falling like the pig gives us the opportunity to rise again, and realize that failure and successes go hand-in-hand.

(Peyups is the moniker of University of the Philippines. Atty. Dennis R. Gorecho heads the seafarers’ division of the Sapalo Velez Bundang Bulilan law offices. For comments, e-mail info@sapalovelez.com, or call 09175025808 or 09088665786.)

Abalos Drug Testing Order

kind of political will.

Hopefully, as emphatic as Abalos has been in displaying an executive desire to do good (beginning with his exposure of scalawags within the PNP), LGUs all over the country should show support to the mandatory drug testing order.

If we harken back to the not so recent past, we will get to unpleasantly discover that some excellent government campaigns die and wither as time goes by after starting like a house on fire.

I think this character trait is essentially Filipino because as it is often argued and written about, we have short memories.

Abalos’ order is not an original idea but it should catch fire and become a template for all national government agencies as well as for the civil service bureaucracy, year in, year out.

For a growing country like us - why, we were only around 20M when I was growing up - Filipinos today have swelled to 110M in population.

It might be a good idea for Sec. Abalos to form a national secretariat at the central DILG HQ to monitor the results of his mandatory drug testing order.

Assuming he may not find results to his satisfaction, the fact that every personnel of all agencies under the DILG umbrella has obeyed and undergone drug testing is a testimony that Abalos is in complete control of his department.

We cannot help but compare Abalos with his predecessors who may have overlooked, ignored or plainly missed implementing a simlar order.

Unfortunately, the few “bad eggs” who will be eventually found guilty of using illegal drugs will be disciplined or suspended accordingly.

But when these guys return to resume their jobs after undergoing a rehab are expected to become better employees.

This is the objective of mandatory drug testings.

Some government personnel are discourteus and impolite because some of them may be under the influence of illegal drugs, shabu in particular.

For a nation and a people aspiring to be great (again), it is a requirement that everyone possesses no bad habit.

I pray that from now on, Abalos should sustain his order by feeding the public with regular positive feedback, beginning from his own office and staff, on a weekly basis.

Since the SILG is a former mayor of Mandaluyong City, it might be nice and proper if his bailiwick becomes the first LGU to comply, conduct and produce results of his mandatiory drug testing order.

As Anthony Robbins continued to expound: “The Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” (Email feedback to fredlumba@yahoo.com). GOD BLESS THE PHILIPPINES!